tattoos and civil rights

bill did over post the photographs along with my narrative of the inked life, they also did some research around the details, such as the fact that tattooing didn’t become legal in NYC until 1997. of course i knew it was unlawful, you practically needed a code word to get in to the ink parlors back in the day, but i didn’t know when it was decriminalized.

i need to thank bill cohen for jogging a long editorial (with photographs by katie cronin) about my tats on his great tattoosday weblog. &, in honor of national poetry month, each tattoo feature is paired with a poem by the subject on billyblog. poetry & tattoos…who’da thunk?

ink wasn’t always unlawful in NYC, it was made so in the course of the psychedelic 60s, when all the new dope-shooters shared their needles in drowsy bursts of hippie love & tattoo parlors shared in the blame for the Great Hepatitis Epidemic of 1961.

i won’t go on and on about the government outlawing everything that might hurt you. motorcycling without a helmet, driving without a seatbelt, smoking a joint, getting a tattoo… more people die on operating tables than anywhere else, should we outlaw hospitals? of coursework that’s a dull statement, but it’s simply taking governmental logic to its illogical finish.

i’m glad to have bill’s post to discuss and “for-your-own-good” safety laws to rant about today because the thing that’s bothering me is SO large and SO dreadful that, yes, once again my head is about to explode. and i don’t reckon i can bear to write about it yet: upset, fucking disappointed in president obama, to go there right now.